Re: [xsl] Newbie - trying to extract specific values from XML file.

Hi Julian,
> I have a long html file (see http://hq.tvw.net/template.html)
> that includes a mass of merge codes from an old program.
What I'd suggest is that you set up a key that retrieves the <Answer>
element with a particular name. The key would look like:
<xsl:key name="answers" match="Answer" use="@name" />
Then anywhere in the template where you have something like:
&laquo;SETstd&raquo;
you can use, instead:
<xsl:apply-templates select="key('answers', 'SETstd')" />
The call to the key() function retrieves the <Answer> element whose
name attribute has the value 'SETstd'. The <xsl:apply-templates>
instruction applies templates to it. You then need templates that look
like:
<xsl:template match="Answer[@name = 'SETstd']">
SETstd is <xsl:value-of select="TFValue" />
</xsl:template>
to get the appropriate text for the given answer.
You can similarly use the key to retrieve the <Answer> elements where
they're tested in IF statements within the current template. For
example:
&laquo;IF Setstd = FALSE&raquo;
can be replaced by:
<xsl:if test="key('answers', 'SETstd')/TFValue = 'false'">
Note that you have to do a bit of work to identify what descendant of
the <Answer> element you need to look at in these tests, since it
depends on the structure of the XML that you're using (whether the
<Answer> element contains a <RptValue> element, a <TFValue> element,
a <TextValue> element or something else.
The key is a very efficient way to get at the <Answer> elements based
on their name. Given that you already have the HTML template written
in a 'pull' way, I think that this approach is going to be easier to
use than a more 'push' method of applying templates to all the
<Answer> elements and just having templates to match them.
Cheers,
Jeni
---
Jeni Tennison
http://www.jenitennison.com/
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